IN THIS CHAPTER

I have run across more projects after the fact that missed their initial goals than met them. One reason is that most of the project teams had no clue about what a development process was or how to customize one for a project's unique characteristics. In addition, most of the projects had little in the way of analysis and design artifacts to show how they got where they were. The whole endeavor lacked the ability to be tracked; that is, it lacked traceability.

This chapter lays the groundwork for the need of a software process. I will present two processes in this book: one that is commercially available from Rational Software called the Unified Process, the other based on my own experiences, which I call the Synergy Process. For reasons to be covered later, the Synergy Process will be presented in Appendix B. The primary process that will guide this book's efforts is the Unified Process, which is presented in greater depth in Appendix A.

This process, along with the Unified Modeling Language (UML), can ensure that your next Java projects have all of the muscle they need to succeed. More importantly, these projects will stand the test of time. They will be able to flex and bend with shifts in both the underlying businesses they support and the technology framework upon which they were built. They won't be declared legacy applications before they reach production status.